The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

Musician

Mel09A had made it his routine to play his flute to the tune of the sunrise. Every morning, he woke up early and practiced his music to the amazement of other early birds; though he paid little heed to them, as long as they didn't bother him.

Like many, he'd spent his life drifting; living in many realities over the course of years. He was used to the process of shifting, he'd done it a million times.

This reality, Aetheria, held his interest. A beautiful universe whose designers invested themselves into every detail. Mel guessed that it must have taken at least a million years to build this reality.

His home was a quaint one, calm and quiet. The walls were of a reddish wood, the lighting was warm; candles, everywhere that they could go -- except they didn't burn, they simply were.

His music was his life; there was nothing else. Even before he'd undergone the leap, he'd been an accomplished musician. Mel had been his first name, Ferrimon had been his last. Only Mel was remembered by the great union of realities, the Dust, it was remembered as the prefix of his designation; how he hated that!

He held his treasured flute in his hands, though it was only a copy; scanned down to the molecule it was the same; except it wasn't. It sounded the same, except somehow it didn't. Perhaps this was because Mel knew consciously that it wasn't real, that no matter how accurate a copy it was, somewhere down in the decimals there was a tiny discrepancy that made it a complete fraud. But he treasured it nonetheless. The original had been destroyed when the Androids burned his world in their push for dominance of the galaxy, so had his body; it was only through the Digitals that he survived, downloading himself into their network so that he could escape on their arks.

How long had it been? A million years? A billion? It didn't matter. Long ago his people had found a new home, safe from the Androids; a place the Androids could never go. They had embraced it with their smart dust, microscopic robots that held portions of their universe, tied together through quantum communication to create a rich whole. Their new home gave them power, safety, and life.

He checked his mail. A wooden box the size of a briefcase, lying on his coffee table. He unfastened the lock -- it only responded to his touch -- and opened it. Inside was a single letter, neatly packaged in a cream-colored envelope. It was from his sister, living in Terrasim; a digital replica of Earth set in the nineteen-forties -- minus the war. Mel had gone there once, he was blown away by the detail. Everything was exactly the way it should be according to historical recordings. The former parent of Luna looked exactly as it did in the day, a simpler time that was quite inviting once the social inequalities were removed.

Letters were something his sister was fond of, especially since the 'forties didn't have anything more advanced than a typewriter for the purpose of writing.

Though starvation didn't exist, neither did death, he was hungry. He got up and went to the kitchen, there was a selection of foodstuffs. He grabbed a can of minestrone soup from the cabinet, peeled the top off, and poured it into a bowl. He stretched a plastic lid over the top of the bowl, sealing it. The bowl began to heat up, warming the contents until they reached the ideal temperature. Mel had done this before so he knew how long to cook, he stopped at the point and peeled the top off. Steam wafted into the air, the warm aroma of vegetables and broth was soothing. Because the bowl was insulated, it was cool on the outside, thus it didn't burn his hands when he picked it up and took it to the table, grabbing a spoon along the way.

The news ran on a paper feed, a roll of paper that was fed through a printer endlessly. The words were printed on its surface, then the ink was erased by a sponge at the bottom, so the blank paper could go through again. It felt like an ideal method for such a thing, screens were too bright and energetic, only paper or its imitations could truly be a relaxing method of reading information.

The headline was bold. ANDROID COLLECTIVE DISBANDS.

Mel hadn't expected this, the Collective, the entity whose formation had destroyed so much and killed so many. According to the headling, it just, disbanded? Of course, this information was being collected from radio and light transmissions; meaning that it was obsolete by several million years, no quantum link had been sustained when the Digitals fled, they were too afraid of it somehow being used to track them.

It was uplifting news. And he heard the commotion outside of people cheering. The Collective has disbanded! But why? No information was given as to why it disbanded; it just did.

He quickly finished his soup.

Grabbing his flute, he stepped out of his home to meet the crowd of people. There was rapid chatter over what had happened.

He edged through the sea of digitized souls and made his way to the very edge of the island of Dermii. He leaned over the balcony, cradling his flute. He peered off into eternity. And began to play.

The noise of the crowd suddenly quietened as they all stopped to hear the song. A melody that carried the tone of both happiness and sadness, celebrating the fall of the Collective; and mourning what had been destroyed in its rise.

Mel was a transitioned classical. There were only ten in all the realities. He was the oldest.